One of the most crucial “story essentials” when writing a novel is to craft an active protagonist. Protagonists who are active and engage meaningfully with their world will grip the reader. Protagonists who feel like they sleepwalk through a novel will have them reaching for something different to read.

And the protagonist(s) (for simplicity I’m going to stick to a singular protagonist for the rest of the post) should be active throughout the entire novel. Yes. Every. Single. Scene.

They can’t just want something, they need to be actively going after it, even if that’s just to figure something out.

The reasons for this cut to the heart of why we read and write novels entirely.

Here’s what I mean.